"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. ”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Who's your choice for Mayor in 2015?

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

This could get REAL interesting

We are a little over 12 hours from the filing deadline for the special election for Senate District 30, and Democrats Kevin Gallagher, Robert Spence and State Representative Beverly Marrero (D-89) have pulled petitions for the Democratic Primary.

Spence is hardly a stranger to the world of “old boy” politics. After serving a whopping eleven days longer than he needed to collect a city pension, he found a means of representing the City of Memphis that was far more lucrative than civil service--- He provided it with legal representation in private practice to the tune of $310,912.44 over the span of fifteen months.

Not bad work if you can get it. The city so cash strapped that the mere mention of raises for policemen sparks a battle the likes of which is rarely seen outside Fallujah somehow managed to find enough change in the sofa to toss a former City Attorney roughly $250,000 per year to do the same job that he was doing at $97,000 per year when he had a city office.

5 comments:

I did a little poking around. Seems Spence has been working hard to get himself on boards of various organizations around town. Ballet Memphis, Bioworks, Planned Parenthood. He's a "master" with Leadership Memphis and like Bob said his wife works for the RDC. Plenty of connections with the elites of city and enough money to self finance a special election campaign. Could he be appointed by the county commission after that hostile meeting he had concerning the Fed Ex forum? Would having both Marrero and Gallagher on the ballot split the white progressive vote? Is Spence just going to do a mail out and a few TV commercials for his campaign?